Water Quality Indices Used for Surface Water Vulnerability Assessment
International Journal of Environmental Sciences, Volume 2, No. 1, September 2011
20 Pages Posted: 13 Oct 2012
Date Written: June 11, 2011
Abstract
Assessment of water quality can be defined as the analysis of physical, chemical and biological characteristics of water. Water quality indices aim at giving a single value to the water quality of a source reducing great amount of parameters into a simpler expression and enabling easy interpretation of monitoring data. In this study, various water quality indices (WQI) used for assessing surface water quality are discussed. As different National and International Agencies involved in water quality assessment and pollution control defines water quality criteria for different uses of water considering different indicator parameters, so there are numerous WQI specific to any region or area. An attempt to cover all different water quality indices developed worldwide, their background and application area has been made here. In this context, this paper displays a comparative study of many indices and detailed out eight WQI’s perceived as simple, basic and most important indices for water quality assessment. Their mathematical structure, set of parameters, calculation, aggregation formula and flaws have also been detailed out.
Keywords: Surface water quality, parameters, water quality index, sub-indices, aggregation
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